Finding a Hobby That You Love

Take a notepad and write down all the things that interest you. For an example I like art, music, games, movies, writing, food photography, eating foods, webdesign, teaching, astronomy & jokes. The list will go on as I grow older and learn many new things.

You can also checkout your facebook profile to see the list of things you have liked, so you will find out the things that interest you.

Now list the things you love to do and give them star marks depending on how much you love them. For an example I will give blogging & webdesign 5 stars because I love these 2 things more than others.

Then I will give 4 stars to movies and 3 for music and games. The purpose of this exercise is to find out the winners.

Then pick your top hobbies and see if you can dedicate 5-10 years to any one of them. When I started blogging, I asked myself can I blog for 5 years? The answer was yes and I started blogging.

When you will find a few hobbies that you can dedicate 5-10 years or an entire lifetime, you have yourself some master hobbies.

How to Figure Out If You Are Good At It?

If you want to turn your hobby into a passion and make it profitable, you have to be really good at it. For this ask opinions from your friends/family and listen to what they have to say about your ability. Let’s take skateboarding for an example. Do you have some mad skills?

If you are good at computers, are you the one person your friends/family comes to when it is about computers? Do you know a lot about this hobby of yours? Take an online trivia quiz and see how much you know.

If you are already good at what you love, then it’s an advantage. If you are not then this can be improved. When I started blogging and web design, I was not good but I learned and improved myself over time.

Who would have thought that a passion of bird luring can be a job, More here Photo credit: Lee Harris

How to Find If the Hobby Pays Well?

Does the hobby pays well?

If you have finally found something that you love to do and you are good at, then there won’t be a problem to make it profitable. If you like something and there are few more people around who love this, you bet you can make a business around it.

Here comes the cool part!

How many people you think who are interested in this stuff around the world? The best part of building a business online is that you can reach people all over the world. The whole world is your audience.

Let’s take the example of skateboards, what businesses can be done around just skateboards?

Skateboard sales

Skateboard repairing

Skateboard designs

Stickers

Custom arts/graffiti

Stunts

Training

Retro skateboards

Skateboarding gears

Tee-shirts

Skateboarding videos

And so many things you can start just around your passion and turn it into a profitable business online.

You will know it better, how much your passion costs but for this example of skateboarding I did some internet research. An average skateboard costs roughly $50-$200. Then you will need a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. That’s an additional $100-$200. A small ramp for performing jumps cost around $50. Source

If an average skateboarder had to change/upgrade their gear every 1 year, then he/she will be spending roughly $1,000 every year for this hobby.

In just 5 years an average skater is spending $5,000 on their hobby. This number can grow bigger if they decide to purchase expensive boards and commit to this hobby for more years.

Total the amount you are spending to get a clear idea of how much your hobby is costing you.

How many people having this passion?

We have internet so we don’t have to do any guesswork. I went to google keyword tool and typed the word “Skateboard”

It returned 7,480,000 searches. This means that every month over 7 million searches are done that are related to skateboards.

I went to facebook and I found that skateboarding the sport has close to 9 million fans and skateboard (interest) has around 700,000 fans. So you see how big this hobby is.

I went to just 2 of these sources (google & facebook) that’s not the entire internet and not even the entire number of skateboarding lovers.

If I take just 1,000 skateboarders from this pool who will become your customers every year and they will make you earn $1,000 each, that means you have (1,000×1,000) = $1,000,000 –a 1 million dollar a year online business.

Have You Found Your Passion Yet?

Go ahead and start your homework. Write down your hobbies and figure out which ones you love most. Then check them to see if you are good at it and improve it. Determine how much your hobby costs. Then do some online research to find how many people are into that hobby using google keyword tool and facebook.

By the way, I am about to launch my next online course that will guide you to start an online business from home around your passion. Feel free to check it out here.

Not only is this pursuit important for the individuals, it also represents an opportunity for us as a society to unlock a ton of innovation.

Way too many people are droning along in jobs they hate, doing the bare minimum. If people were being driven by passion, they would be so much more likely to do the kind of bold things that are required to unlock new ideas.